


God, how the stars did fall

by ADyingFlower



Series: I'm only doing this because I love you [8]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Captivity, Dark Keith (Voltron), Depression, First Kiss, M/M, Mental Coercion, Meteor, Stockholm Syndrome, Survivor Guilt, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-16
Updated: 2019-06-16
Packaged: 2020-05-12 16:02:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,545
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19232413
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ADyingFlower/pseuds/ADyingFlower
Summary: “C’mon,” Keith whispers fondly, brushing his thumb over Lance’s knuckles. “Let’s have some dinner.”They eat saran wrapped sandwiches and Tupperware pickles on top of the CRV, Keith having to boost Lance up with his hands to help him climb up onto the roof. Keith laughs as Lance barely manages to catch the flying plastic from disappearing into the desert from a stray wind, the fading sunlight setting his hair on fire as he carefully holds Lance hand and plucks the saran wrap out from it to hide it away in the Tupperware from when it's time to leave.Now, lying on his back on the too warm metal and the press of a body next to him, Lance interlocks his fingers with Keith’s, eyes on the sky as they wait for the stars to fall, one after the other.“Why can’t you just let me go?” He asks, surrounded by thousands of miniature suns, suffocating underneath them.(Lance makes an important decision, and the two of them have a date under the stars)





	God, how the stars did fall

**Author's Note:**

> 8/12

“There’s going to be meteor shower tonight,” Keith excitedly tells him during lunch, grinning at him over the soup he spent three hours making for them.

Both of them are sitting in Keith’s small fold up table and chairs, crammed into the corner of the small, small kitchen. Lance can feel the hum of the fridge behind him all the way down to his bones, to the fine way he clenches his teeth around the spoon.

“Oh?” He tries to put enthusiasm into his voice, but he feels so tired. Drained.

It’s a mercy that Keith doesn’t notice. “At around nine,” He confides eagerly, almost vibrating in his chair. “You wanna go see it? I can drive us out there, just the two of us. It’ll be like a proper date, you always wanted to go on one with me, right?!”

Lance nods his head shallowly, not looking up from spooning through his soup, just watching the yellow liquid and the pasta dance around the metal. He takes another listless sip after several long awkward moments, not missing Keith’s concerned frown.

“I’ll clean up lunch,” Keith says, out of the blue, the frown never leaving his face. “You can just take a nap with Blue until dinner, okay?”

All these questions that are never really questions. Even if Lance doesn’t answer, Keith will do it anyhow. One of these days, Keith will ask to fuck him, and Lance would probably just nod his head and take it, just like now.

Keith comes around the table to unlock the handcuff tying his left wrist to the arm of the chair. Lance blinks down at him as Keith doesn’t immediately urge him to stand up. Instead, Keith just stares at his hand as if in deep thought, absentmindedly rubbing at the abrasions around his wrist that have become as familiar as his own face.

“You know I love you, right?” Keith whispers, finally breaking his gaze to stare up at Lance with utter adoration in his eyes. “I love you more than all of the stars in the sky, I would and had killed people for you. If you asked me to kill myself for you, I would do it.”

Without meaning to, his mouth parts, just watching Keith vow to him, absolute sincerity in his face and in his voice. And as Keith trails his fingers over Lance’s, he has the urge to curl his fingers around his.

So he does. He doesn’t know why, but he does, and Keith beams up at him for it, kissing the back of his palm like it’s something precious.

~~Stop it stop being nice to me stop it stop it stop it~~

 -

The ride to the meteor shower place is long. He’s been in this car exactly three times before - once was the night that would change his life, and the second time was when Keith got over excited and took him out for a trip into the desert only a few weeks into his captivity.

Needless to say, Lance bolted as soon as he had the chance, got violently tackled not three feet from the car, was dragged literally by his hair back to the shack, and the collar soon made its reappearance afterwords.

Resting his head against the cool glass of the window, Lance closes his eyes, letting both the bumpy ride and the scratchy music wash over his senses.

“Sorry about the music, we’re pretty far out from even the middle of nowhere.” Keith snorts a laugh, hands resting casually against the wheel.

Once upon a time, Lance would dream about yanking the wheel from his hands, sending them both flying off course. But all there is for miles around them is sand and rocks - all he would do is make Keith angry. And he doesn't want to make Keith angry. Not when all it does is earn himself pain and discomfort.

“It’s fine.” He murmurs, feeling the churn of the sand under the wheels all the way down to his eyes. He’s vibrating out of his seat, just far, far away from this. Anywhere but here.

Lance can feel Keith glancing at him, but he locks that away deep down, his eyes thin slits towards the setting sun.

He breaths out a silent sigh, thinking about another time he might have been in this car. It's the only way for him to have been hauled back to the shack during his failed attempt to get away.

That's one thing that he'll probably never learned the full truth about. Just like the glass incident, they’ve never talked about his escape attempt.

In all honesty, he doesn’t know why he ran. He had just went to the bathroom, and when he came back, Blue was pawing at the door. There must have been a lizard outside, or something. Whatever it was, Lance just thought that if he jiggled the knob a couple of times that the lizard would be scared off and he could go back to bed without Blue’s loud complaints and growls, could go back to the blankness of sleep where his brain wasn't a mess of guilt and grief.

But the door opened, and his mind went blank.

While he was distracted with the realization that Keith left the door unlocked, Blue slipped out between his feet. And then - he thought about coyotes, blood stained hands and the eyes of a predator chaining him in their bed, and before he even realized what he was doing, he was frantically digging into Keith’s small closet for a pair of sneakers and sprinting out after her, barely remembering to close the door before his feet, so unused to shoes, churned in the sand as he left everything behind as he followed the weaving patterns of Blue racing through the desert.

And for that moment, as the shack got smaller and smaller behind him, he finally felt both freer than ever before and just like he was back to being chained to the bed.

He doesn’t know when he passed out. Only that he woke up sticky with sweat and completely restrained to the bed, with his pants unbuttoned and Keith sitting on the bed by his side with his head in his hands.

Later, he checked in the shower. No sign of anything like that happening. He still doesn’t know if anything like that occurred while he was unconscious, and he tries not to think about it.

The handcuff tying his wrist to the armrest jingles as he shifts in his seat. That day, after his failed escape attempt, when he first woke up…

Keith had held him close to him, had unlocked the collar and the handcuffs and the ankle cuff, just to bury Lance’s head in his shoulder and held him so tightly he wasn’t sure where one ended and the other one began.

And Lance?

He hugged Keith right back. Tucked his head into his shoulder and pressed his palms into the warmth of Keith's back. 

Neither of them apologized for what happened, and they didn’t explain it either. They just went on with their daily routine.

And so it continues.

Eventually, the car slows to a stop on one unremarkable patch of sand compared to the next. But Keith seems to like it, if his sappy smile towards Lance is any indicator.

_He thinks this is romantic, doesn’t he?_

“C’mon,” Keith whispers fondly, brushing his thumb over Lance’s knuckles. “Let’s have some dinner.”

They eat saran wrapped sandwiches and Tupperware pickles on top of the CRV, Keith having to boost Lance up with his hands to help him climb up onto the roof. Keith laughs as Lance barely manages to catch the flying plastic from disappearing into the desert from a stray wind, the fading sunlight setting his hair on fire as he carefully holds Lance hand and plucks the saran wrap out from it to hide it away in the Tupperware from when it's time to leave.

Now, lying on his back on the too warm metal and the press of a body next to him, Lance interlocks his fingers with Keith’s, eyes on the sky as they wait for the stars to fall, one after the other.

“Why can’t you just let me go?” He asks, surrounded by thousands of miniature suns, suffocating underneath them.

He hears Keith’s hitched breath, and then he squeezes his hand back. “I don’t know.” Keith admits quietly, some of the manic happiness draining out of him as the two of them realize just what kind of situation they’re in. This isn’t just a date in the middle of the desert. This is Lance's kidnapper taking him out on an outing to stop him from snapping and killing himself. He has bruises on his wrists and ankles, he wants to kill himself more often than he wants to actually get out of bed. There's a body buried miles away and a shirt that had to be burned after no amount of cold water would save it. “I just…was so _lonely_. And you were there, so _bright,_ and I fell in love.”

Lance rolls over onto his side, watching as Keith copies him, keeping their fingers interlocked. “That, Keith…That doesn’t mean you love me. You’re _obsessed_ with me.”

Keith scrunches up his eyebrows, looking so honestly pained that Lance wants to rub his wrinkles away with his thumb. “I…don’t know how else to describe it. I want to keep you safe, and make you happy, but the thought of someone else seeing you... it make me _so_ angry. I want to punch them. I want to beat them until their skulls caves in, so they can’t ever see you again.”  

He tries to pull away, but Keith’s digs his nails into the back of his hand, stopping him in his tracks. “This is love, right? I know this possessiveness isn’t normal, but I can’t help myself. I can’t stop myself from wanting you, your smiles and your touch, more than anything.”

“No, this isn’t right…” Lance shakes his head, but Keith steamrolls over him.

“I’m not a bad boyfriend, am I?” Keith asks, honestly looking upset at the thought, his eyes tearing up as he rambles himself straight into incoherence. “I buy you anything you want, you never have to be jealous that I’ll leave you. I’ll do anything for you - name it. Doesn’t matter how hard it is to find or how expensive, if you want something, fine, I’ll gladly get it for you. I’ll kill any of your asshole exes, I’ll be your slave, just please…”

“Don’t leave me.”

Lance blinks his own wet eyes, watching Keith roughly rub his face with his hand. For some reason, he reaches out and gently pushes away Keith’s hand, dainty rubbing the tears away himself.

It’s…

Yet -

Let’s face the facts here. He’s a seventeen year old from a large family. Lance got in the elite Garrison program for space flight through his own grades alone, leaving him alone in the deserts of Arizona far from Cuba’s muggy heat. He’s had two girlfriends and a boyfriend in the last three years in the states, and they all ended disastrously, each worse than the last. Pidge and Hunk are the best friends a guy can ask for, but sometimes, watching them techno-babble at each other, the youngest child, always looked over, his parents concerned, and almost frightened, expressions when he said he wanted to go to America for school, all just to stand out…

Even he’s lonely, just like Keith.

His mouth spasms as he considers the truths laid out on the table.

In all honesty, he’s not leaving this desert. Not alive. Even if he’s somehow miraculously rescued, he’s for sure lost his scholarship by now. Just like James said, all he is now is that missing boy from the Garrison. Back home to Cuba, without a future, and bringing shame to his family. And that's not even considering if he's implicated in James death. He killed him. James tried to rescue him and he was killed for that. 

His family can't ever find out. It would break their hearts, even the thought of the disappointment, the _shame_  on their faces -he shudders.  If that’s the case, if it's to be alive but something to be disgusted at, or assumed to be dead, then shouldn’t he just be dead? Pidge and Hunk have surely moved on by now, and so did the rest of his ‘friends’. It will hurt his family, but they will recover, as they always did. Just when his cousin Gabriel drowned as a kid, or when his _abuelita_  on his papi's side passed away in her sleep. It hurts, god it hurts, but they'll recover. They'll move on. 

All he has is what he can do from here.

He can continue to fight Keith every step of the way, or he can let the depression drag him down, like it has for the past several weeks, or…

Slowly, his hand moves to cup Keith’s cheek.

Keith’s not that bad of an option, right? Lance wanted to get his number to see about a date before all of this, and he’s surprisingly sweet. If… he can just pretend that everything before this never happened, then both of them will be a lot happier, right? And he might even lose the collar, permanently!

There’s surely worse things out there for him. Keith could have raped him at any time, or beat him, or forced him into a number of things, but the farthest they’ve gone is cuddling.

(a part of Lance knows he’s rationalizing this, that he’s trying to make this seem normal, but he can’t _stop_ himself)

Once he makes this choice, there’s no backing out, this he knows. But at the same time -

he is so

tired

Leaning forward, gently, like a newborn’s grasp, he slides his lips against Keith’s. Tears slip out as he closes his eyes, forcing himself to do this, to just get this over with.

It takes a long moment before Keith seems to realize that Lance is kissing him for the first time, and then there’s frantic hands petting through his hair, against his face and down his sides, and then Lance is breaking the chaste kiss to beg, “Too much too much -”

And mercifully, Keith backs off. Eyes shining, he nuzzles up against Lance’s jaw, a soft, almost small, smile creeping onto his face.

“Thank you,” he murmurs, pressing a tiny, reverent kiss against his cheek. “Thank you thank you thank you…”

The first light shines above them.

Both of them froze, drawing away from each other with their chins craned high as the first meteor passed through the atmosphere. Then the next, and the next, shimmering lines cutting through the darkness of the night sky.

Keith sits up with a gasp, his face lighting as the meteors burn up into the atmosphere. “Lance, look!”

He looks.

Sitting up next to him, Lance leans against Keith’s side, resting his head against his shoulder. Between them, he holds Keith hands gingerly, in the kind of instinctive way a baby grabs their parent’s finger.

“Yeah,” he says, feeling Keith curl his fingers around his. “I’m looking.”

**Author's Note:**

> Next: Domestic


End file.
